4. Dean
Dean
I know I should have kept walking.
That should be the easy part. The simple part.
Maddie asked her question, I answered it, and now I should move on like it didn’t matter any more than the others did.
Like the extra second she kept the camera on me didn’t settle somewhere under my skin.
Like the way she looked at me before she finally forced out the question wasn’t enough to make me want to drag her into my office, shut the door, and ask her what the hell she was thinking looking at me like that.
Instead, I keep moving through the tunnel with my shoulders tight and my jaw set, trying to shake off the way my attention still feels caught on her.
It’s ridiculous. It should be. She was standing there doing her job, filming content the same way she films all of us, and I answered the same question everyone else did.
Nothing about it should feel loaded. Nothing about it should be sticking to me this hard.
And yet the image follows me anyway—her tucked into that spot in the tunnel, phone in hand, trying so hard to look unaffected when I know damn well she filmed me longer than the others.
The problem with Maddie has never been that I don’t know better.
That would almost be easier. If I were younger, less aware, less disciplined, maybe I could chalk it up to bad judgment or bad timing and move on.
But I do know better. I know exactly how this looks.
I know exactly where the lines are. She works for the organization.
She’s younger than me. She’s close to the guys, woven into this team in a way that makes her part of what I’m responsible for protecting.
She has a boyfriend. Every one of those reasons should be enough to shut this down before it ever has the chance to become something real.
The truth is, they would be enough if this were only about logistics.
If this were only about the job, the age gap, the optics, the fact that she stands on the other side of several boundaries I built for myself long before she ever walked into this building.
But the minute it becomes about her—about the way her smile slips before she forces it back into place, about the way exhaustion lives in her eyes even when she’s trying to charm the room out of noticing, about the way my body reacts to the sound of her voice saying my name—none of those reasons land the way they should.
That’s the part that pisses me off.
Because I know the line is there. I can point right at it. I just don’t feel it the way I’m supposed to anymore.
I push the door open expecting a few minutes of quiet before the rest of my routine starts.
A little space to get my head back where it needs to be before puck drop.
Instead, Camille is already inside, leaning against the edge of my desk like she belongs there, one ankle crossed over the other, her phone in one hand and a look on her face that says she’s been waiting just long enough to be annoyed about it.
Of course she has.
Camille never enters a room without looking like she planned it three days ago.
Everything about her is polished—her hair, her clothes, the careful ease she wears like it came naturally when I know damn well it doesn’t.
She cultivates herself the way people cultivate an image, and usually I can appreciate that sort of discipline in someone.
Today, all it does is make the room feel crowded.
She pushes off the desk when I walk in and crosses to me with that small, practiced smile she uses when she wants something but hasn’t decided yet how obvious she’s willing to be about it.
“Finally,” she says, her tone light enough to pass for teasing if I didn’t know her better. “What took you so long?”
Her hand slides up my chest, smoothing over the lapel of my jacket like she’s correcting something.
The gesture should be familiar by now. Maybe even comforting, if this were the kind of relationship either of us had ever actually built.
Instead, I just stand there and wait for some part of me to respond to her touch.
For something to spark. Some shift in my body. Some awareness.
Nothing happens.
Only minutes ago, standing in that tunnel with Maddie, I was aware of too much.
The sound of her voice. The way her eyes dipped and lifted again.
The way my pulse kicked the second she trained the camera on me.
I felt every inch of space between us like it mattered.
I felt the pull of walking too close to a line I already know I shouldn’t cross. I felt it all.
But with Camille’s hand on me now, I feel absolutely nothing. The contrast lands hard enough to strip away whatever patience I had left for pretending this arrangement still makes sense.
“Filming,” I say, stepping around her and setting my keys on the desk. “Something for Maddie.”
I don’t miss the way her face changes when I say Maddie’s name. It isn’t dramatic. Camille doesn’t do dramatic. It’s just a shift around the mouth, a coolness settling into her expression before she lets out a small scoff and folds her arms.
“Of course you were,” she says. “I swear, Dean, you spend more time humoring her than anybody in this building.”
There’s something about the way she says it that makes something in me go still.
“She was working.”
Camille gives a little shrug and glances toward the door like the whole conversation already bores her. “Please. Pointing a camera at men in expensive suits and posting it online is not exactly life-saving work.”
The room changes. It’s subtle. The kind of shift most people would miss if they weren’t inside it. One second I’m irritated. The next, I’m done.
“Stop.” The word lands flatter and harder than anything I’ve said to her in months, and it’s enough to make her blink. “You don’t get to talk about her like that.”
Her chin lifts slightly, and I can see the calculation start behind her eyes—the quick mental adjustment as she tries to decide whether to laugh this off, push harder, or act like I’m overreacting.
“I didn’t say anything that isn’t true,” she says, cooler now.
I hold her gaze and wonder, not for the first time, why I stayed in this as long as I did.
Convenience, maybe. Familiarity. The ease of being with someone who asked for very little emotionally as long as I showed up the right way in public.
Maybe I liked not having to explain myself.
Maybe I liked that nothing about Camille touched the parts of me I keep locked down. Maybe it just filled space.
Whatever it was, it’s gone now.
“You don’t get to decide what her job is,” I tell her, my voice steady in a way that makes hers feel messy by comparison. “And you don’t get to decide what it’s worth.”
Camille laughs softly, but there’s no amusement in it. “Wow. You’re serious.”
I don’t answer right away. I don’t need to. The silence between us does the work for me, stretching just long enough for her to realize I’m not going to backpedal and not nearly long enough for me to lose my nerve.
“I think you should go.”
For a second, she just stares at me. Then she smiles like I’ve made some kind of dry joke she’s expected to appreciate. “Okay,” she says. “Very funny.”
“I’m not joking.” Her smile falters. I should feel bad about that. I don’t. What I feel is the clean, immediate relief of finally saying something I should have said weeks ago. “I’m done, Camille.”
The words don’t scrape on the way out. They don’t stick. They don’t even surprise me, which tells me everything I need to know about how long they’ve been sitting there waiting.
Her face hardens in stages. First confusion. Then annoyance. Then a disbelief so complete it almost loops back around into confidence. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“It’s game day,” she says, like that explains everything. “You’re in a mood.”
“I’m not in a mood.” I brace my hands on the edge of the desk, not because I need the support, but because it keeps me from pacing. “I should have ended this already. We both know that.”
“No,” she says, the word coming quicker this time, sharper. “You’re stressed and looking for a fight. That’s not the same thing.”
I almost laugh, because that would be easier for her, wouldn’t it? If this were a fight. If this were heat and temper and something temporary that would cool off after the game. But there’s no heat in me where she’s concerned. That’s the whole problem. There hasn’t been for a while.
“We were never going to have a future together.”
The sentence lands harder than the others. I can see it in the way her shoulders stiffen.
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s honest.”
Her nostrils flare. “You don’t get to decide that right now.”
“I’m not deciding it now,” I say. “I’m saying it out loud now. There’s a difference.”
For the first time, some of the polish cracks. Not much. Just enough to show the steel underneath. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”
It means I’m tired. Tired of this office feeling colder when she’s in it.
Tired of looking at her and feeling absolutely nothing while another woman can’t even ask me a question in a hallway without my whole body tightening around the sound of her voice.
Tired of pretending I don’t know what she gets out of this because it’s easier than saying it.
“You were never here for me,” I say, and I don’t soften it because there’s no point. “You were here for what comes with me. The name. The access. The money. The image.”
Her eyes flash. “That is not fair.”
“It’s true.”
“Wow.” She lets out a breathless laugh. “So that’s what you think of me?”
I meet her stare and don’t flinch. “I think if I didn’t have this job, this office, and the paycheck that comes with both, you never would have looked at me twice.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. The silence stretches.
When she speaks again, the denial is already back in place. Not because she believes it, but because it’s easier than standing in the middle of what just happened and admitting she saw it coming too.
“You don’t mean any of this,” she says, smoothing a hand down the front of her dress as if she can neaten the conversation the same way she neatens everything else. “You’re upset. Fine. You have your pregame routine, and I’m clearly not helping right now. We can talk later.”
It would almost be impressive, the way she rewrites reality in real time, if I didn’t find it exhausting.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
But she’s already reaching for her purse.
“I know how you get before games,” she says, as if I didn’t just end things. “I’ll see you later.”
Like it’s settled. Like the world will reset itself by the time the final horn sounds and she’ll step back into whatever version of this relationship she prefers.
I don’t stop her. I don’t chase after the denial. I don’t repeat myself. I’m done spending energy on things that should already be over.
She leaves, shutting the door behind her with the same measured control she had when I walked in, and the silence that follows doesn’t feel sharp or empty. It feels clean.
I stand there for a minute, staring at the door, letting the stillness settle over the room.
Then I drag a hand over the back of my neck and exhale, long and slow, trying to push the tension out through my shoulders.
The game is still there. The routine is still there.
The job is still there. Whatever just shifted in my personal life does not change the fact that I have a team to coach tonight and no room to be anything less than fully locked in.
My hand drops to my wrist without thought, thumb pressing against the underside of my watch until I feel the slight give of the band hidden beneath it.
The hair tie.
The damn thing has been there so long it feels like part of me now, more grounding than metal or leather or anything else I could wear. I brush it once beneath the watch face, just enough to know it’s still there, and hate how immediately my breathing evens out.
I don’t let myself think too hard about what that says.
Instead, I straighten, grab the game notes from my desk, and head for the door.
I have a pregame routine for a reason. Film.
Meetings. Warmups. The rhythm of it settles my head, keeps the edges clean, keeps me from thinking about things that don’t belong in the middle of a home game.
It should work tonight. It usually does.
But as I step back into the hallway, one thought cuts through everything else anyway, settling low and certain in a place I can’t seem to shut off no matter how hard I try.
Maddie is somewhere in this building. And for the first time all morning, that feels like the only thing I actually want to see.